Monday, August 21, 2017

In praise of "escrache"

There are so many things to write about that as usual I freeze. That is, until I come across something that summarizes the situation so well that it goes beyond belief.

It was Jorge Rodriguez turn to get insulted in public while in Mexico city. Let me see if I can have the non-Venezuelan reader understand how momentous that silly video is. And it is momentous, trust me.

What we see in this video is our new national sport of "escrache", that Argentinean coined term which means public shaming of people who abuse the law or their position. In Venezuela repression stops us from practicing it, but overseas, with over 2 million Venezuelans exiled across the word it is indeed a fair game sport.

In this simple video, on an early Sunday morning when streets are empty and stores closed in Mexico City, the mayor of Caracas, Jorge Rodriguez is walking with his kid(s). He is recognized by a Venezuelan happening to walk around and he is taken up for being in Mexico as if nothing while, because of his political actions, Venezuela is collapsing. Before we discuss the morality of public heckling, lets look at the simple questions this video raised on Jorge Rodriguez (note, no need to translate the video, it is self explanatory).

Why is Jorge Rodriguez on vacation in Mexico when Caracas is a disaster and there is a major political crisis going on?

Since Jorge Rodriguez is a public employee, how does he get the dollars needed not only to go and visit his kid (who I understand goes to Medical School in Mexico), but to pay for his kid studies? The reader should remember that 1) there is a currency control exchange 2) a city mayor paycheck cannot account this life style. Note that his daughter is also out of the country, in Australia, and suffered an escrache of her own while accompanied at Bondi beach by a body guard. So Jorge Rodriguez can support TWO kids overseas. And yet know not of any personal fortune he inherited or made through due diligence.

How come he had no compulsion leaving behind what may have been his mother/aunt/cousin?

Also important, how come Rodriguez (and many in the regime) have their kids studying in foreign universities? Is Venezuela not a socialist paradise of education and peace?

You may say, fine, heckle Rodriguez, but respect his kids. And I will report that until a few months ago I thought it was not right to bestow the parents guilt on their children but that I have changed my mind on that.

See, contrary to, say, nazi kids, there is no way on earth that the children of chavista corrupt/abusive official cannot know that their parents are accused of all sorts of suspicious deals. This is the XXI century and the political tension has existed in Venezuela in high mode since at least 2007 when Chavez lost his constitutional reform referendum.

It is public knowledge that there are hundred of thousands of Venezuelan exiles. It is public knowledge that the regime tries to ex filtrate all of their kids to study overseas. It is public knowledge that many of these kids do flaunt their riches.

What I am trying to say that there is no need to defend these "kids". If you are old enough to go to med school you are old enough to wonder how come your dad has the money to pay for that. Period.

If these kids enjoy their parents cash, well, they might as well share their parents blame. (1)

But I digress. My point lays elsewhere.

In Caracas Jorge Rodriguez is shielded by body guards. The press cannot approach him freely. If the question is tough he dismisses the journalists and there cannot be follow up. In short, there is no way you can see on live TV Jorge Rodriguez taken into account for his lies and actions, as he utters one infamy after another. And this has made him so cocky that he thinks that he can go out of the country and be shielded, if anything in the knowledge that the relatives of whomever heckles him may endure his revenge.

But it does not work that way. First, for inasmuch as Rodriguez stole money paying for a couple of body guards just to stroll the streets of Mexico is, well, impractical and expensive. And second, you cannot expect that 2 million Venezuelans who HAD to leave their home will just do so quietly, in a "never mind" frame of mind. And yet apparently this seems to be what chavismo leadership expects to happen.

My conclusion is stark. When you see scenes like today, the exposing of Rodriguez, his violent initial reaction, then his cowardly escape, and the increasing anger of his accuser, you understand better that Venezuela is on the brink. In Mexico Venezuelans can complain and Rodriguez can run away and get Mexico police provisional protection. But here.... We are under increasing repression and cannot vent off, while the regime digs its heels and thus in the end will have no place where to run away. (2)

Draw your own conclusions.

Escrache is good. Chavismo should meditate on that.

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PD: There is a full account of the second part of the video, in particular the woman's word. She turns out to be Jorge Rodriguez mother though we can say she ages better than her son. What is amazing from her words is her ignorance of the current situation, her simple declaration that all is the fault of the opposition. We do understand better why Jorge Rodriguez is the psychopath we all know him to be. Raised by a woman that surely ranted on how her husband was killed, on how nothing was ever he fault, would do that to you. Or at least add to it. He got from education the inability to assume the consequences of one's actions.

That is chavismo at its best, the impossibility for them to take responsibility for their actions, and even less for their mistakes.

Escrache is good, we need more of it.

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1) We learned tonight that Rodriguez hotel has been tracked down and it has been put under the protection of Mexican police. So there you go, kids cannot plead ignorance.

2) The sister of Rodriguez is Delcy the chair of the fraudulent constituent assembly. She could not hold it, she tweeted a vicious comment. But the thing here is that when you read the replies she gets almost no support from chavista tweeters. She is deluged by snapbacks and insults from the opposition. L'air du temps Delcy....

15 comments:

Also important, how come Rodriguez (and many in the regime) have their kids studying in foreign universities? Is Venezuela not a socialist paradise of education and peace?I am reminded of liberals sending their children to Sidwell Friends instead of DC public schools.

First, for inasmuch as Rodriguez stole money paying for a couple of body guards just to stroll the streets of Mexico is, well, impractical and expensive.I don't think it would have been that expensive to hire some Mexican lowlifes as bodyguards. But I doubt he had the contacts to hire them- and trust them not to rob him.

Escrache is great. The more the merrier. But sinister, evil beasts like Rodriguez and his detestable sister should be BEAT UP in public. Yes: ambushed, humiliated, recorded (protecting the identity of the brave assailant), and left bleeding on the streets overseas.

She, Delcy,should be the goal, the trophy of every "Escrachista" out there. I would love to see her response to a public humiliation. Just leave the violence out...So far the Escraches work because they are non-violent, and should stay that way..

Venezuela’s Maduro compares treatment of officials to that of Jews under Nazis. Venezuela’s president is comparing treatment of his government’s officials abroad to that of Jews in Nazi Germany.President Nicolas Maduro on Tuesday night criticized Venezuelan expatriates who have been harassing or yelling at Venezuelan officials abroad, or who use social media to post photos of the socialist officials living it up overseas while the country’s people are struggling with economic crisis.The Venezuelan leader declared, “We are the Jews of the 21st century.”

Given the blatant anti-Semitism of El Finado, it is rather ironic for Maduro to call Chavistas "the Jews of the 21st century." Hugo Chavez In His Own Words.

"Israel was committing a genocide in Lebanon and its leaders should be held responsible and should be judged by an international tribune...The Israelis criticize Hitler but have done something worse." 2006

"It is not that the Israelis want to exterminate the Palestinians. They are doing it openly. Remember the last Israeli aggression against Gaza. What is it if not genocide?" 2009 (2006)

But to expect consistency from Chavismo- other than their consistent goals of acquiring and maintaining power- is like expecting a cat to like swimming.

Bernard-Henri Lévy: Maduro: Between Castro And PinochetIn the face of this disaster, two questions occur to me.The first reflects my French perspective but applies, in one form or another, to other countries of the West.

How long will Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a contender in France’s spring 2017 presidential election who now aspires to lead the opposition in France as head of the left-wing populist party whose name translates roughly as rebellious France (La France Insoumise), continue to sing the praises of this murderous regime?.....

What has to happen before Mélenchon will speak his conscience—not his previous alliances or his previous words—and admit that he was wrong, admit that this brutal regime was never a proper “source of inspiration,” and acknowledge that the business about a Bolivarian alliance (written into article 62 of his unsuccessful presidential platform), which was supposed to move him (and France!) closer to the heirs of the dear, departed caudillos (Castro, Chavez …), was a really bad idea?Like.... Podemos and the Greeks of Syriza, like Jeremy Corbyn ... Mélenchon and his “rebellious” followers seem to believe that their hero with the bloody hands is excused by the struggle against “imperialism.”And, when they do stir, it is either to blame the victims, as when Djordje Kuzmanovic, a sinister spokesman for Mélenchon’s party, compared Venezuelans demonstrating peacefully for democracy and the rule of law to Pinochet’s putschists in 1970s Chile, or to denounce “disinformation,” as when Alexis Corbière, a newly elected far-left member of the National Assembly, layering shame over cowardice, managed to insult Venezuelans who died for democracy (young people from fancy neighborhoods, Corbière implied, who only got what they deserved) and stigmatizing the opposition that is the target of the government’s savage paramilitary militias (“sometimes people get burned”).Have these self-styled rebels been subdued, or are they hostages?The second question is addressed to the international community, which has at least two reasons to take an interest in Venezuela’s plight.One of those reasons is the responsibility to protect, as spelled out in the United Nations charter, which calls for strong signals in this case: a clear condemnation from a courageous Security Council; gestures of support, such as official welcomes for opposition leaders who still enjoy freedom of movement in Paris, Madrid, and Washington; expressions of solidarity with the Venezuelan legislature, which Maduro’s coup by constituent assembly threatens to dissolve, from the diplomatic missions of France, Spain, the United States, and other nations; and, of course, economic and financial sanctions that go beyond toothless warnings from Mercosur and the timid saber-rattling of Donald Trump.

A less widely known reason why the events in Caracas should concern us is related to the fight against terrorism and the money-laundering that finances it. What is the purpose of the alliance—sorry, the “Bolivarian alliance”—that Chavez made with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former president of Iran? Where have the members of the Colombian FARC disappeared to? One of their leaders, Ivan Rios, told me just before his death in 2007 that FARC members had been sent “on a mission” to the country of “twenty-first century socialism.” How much credence should be given to certain leaders of the anti-Chavist opposition who are crying in the wilderness (at least for now) that there is more to know about Maduro’s links with North Korea, Bashar al-Assad’s Syria, and freelancing Hezbollah renegades?These are only questions.But they are questions that have to be asked.Experience tells us that no act is too base for a desperate regime. The situation in Venezuela merits commissions of inquiry, a Russell Tribunal, and greater interest from the western press rather than the embarrassed silence that so far has met what is, in fact, a slow-motion coup d’état.

"The situation in Venezuela merits commissions of inquiry, a Russell Tribunal, and greater interest from the western press rather than the embarrassed silence that so far has met what is, in fact, a slow-motion coup d’état."

How much is that embarrassed silence from the press due to the earlier cheerleading from the N.American and European media over the *People's Revolution* (its journalists not doing due diligence and thereby giving the regime the O2 it so needed)?-- syd

Notimpacto.com is a great site for breaking news supporting the resistance against the chupacabras who have bled the beautiful country of Venezuela dry. L Soon you will be free Venezuela, I wait with for the day to celebrate when these murderers get what they deserve. My thoughts always with you. G in the liverpool

I thought the same thing. Wow he has a big mouth in VZLA where he is protected by his thugs and fear. Here in the real world he is a coward who runs with hsi tail between his legs. Had the same scene played out on Libertador Avenue in CCS, he would have made a scene and the heckler or his family would be suffering now or dead.

As for Delcy and her illegal "Constituyente", well her Twitter comments can and must be turned over to the Constituyente for analysis as being full of hate and a dangerous instigation according to her own new proposals to go after people who post dangerous, malicious, or hateful comments. She hangs herself with each message....

There is a dude who comments "Los rinrines" on Bocaranda's runrunes under the pseudonym of Oscar Trujillo. He had a good one today: Trump does not need to send Marines to Venezuela but a good crew of rat exterminators.... Any Warfarin in Maduro's soup anyone?

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